Joe Spinell
Joe Spinell was born Joseph J. Spagnuolo in Manhattan, New York of Italian immigrant parents, and the last of six children. His father, Pelegrino Spagnuolo (b. 1892, d. 1950), died from liver and kidney disease. His mother Filomena Spagnuolo (b. 1903, d. 1987) was a bit-part... Read full bio →
Featured Characters
Roles you can spot in Whatthemovie snapshots
Sorcerer
1977
FantastiCozzi
A feature-length documentary about the life and career of Italian director Luigi Cozzi and his obsession with Science Fiction and Fantasy.
The American Nightmare
An examination into the nature of 1960's-70's horror films, the involved artists, and how they reflected contemporary society.
The Undertaker
A deranged undertaker kills various people to keep as his friends in his seedy funeral home.
Married to the Mob
An undercover FBI agent falls in love with a recently widowed mafia wife seeking to start her life over after her husband's murder.
The Children of Times Square
An alienated teenage boy runs away from home and ventures to New York City where he falls in with a gang of juvenile delinquents working as drug dealers and pickpockets for a shady crime boss.
Walking the Edge
A Los Angeles taxi driver helps a distraught woman on the run from gangsters after they murder her husband and young son.
Vigilante
New York City factory worker Eddie Marino (Robert Forster, Oscar nominee for JACKIE BROWN) is a solid citizen and regular guy, until the day a sadistic street gang brutally assaults his wife and murders his child. But when a corrupt judge sets the thugs free, Eddie goes berserk and vows revenge.
Trackdown: Finding the Goodbar Killer
A New York detective and a victim's colleague hunt a killer who preys on single women.
Losin' It
Set in 1965, four Los Angeles school friends -- Woody, Dave, Spider and Wendell -- go on a series of misadventures when they head to Tijuana, Mexico, for a night of cruisin', causing trouble, and to lose their virginity.
Eureka
The best minds in the US are tucked away in a remote town where they build futuristic inventions for the government's benefit.
The Last Horror Film
A New York taxi driver stalks a beautiful actress attending the Cannes Film Festival, which coincides with a series of violent killings of the lady's friends.
One Down, Two to Go
A pair of tough cops go after the mob who jinxed the martial arts tournament and injured their buddy.
Night Shift
A mild-mannered morgue attendant is assigned to the night shift, and his new coworker, along with his prostitute neighbor, convince him of running a prostitution ring out of the morgue.
Movie Madness
A parody of film genres composed of three shorts, spoofing personal growth films, glossy soap operas, and police stories.
Forbidden Zone
A mysterious door in the basement of the Hercules house leads to the Sixth Dimension by way of a gigantic set of intestine. When Frenchy slips through the door, King Fausto falls in love with her. The jealous Queen Doris takes Frenchy prisoner, and it is up to the Hercules family and friend Squeezit Henderson to rescue her.
Nighthawks
An international terrorist has New York in a grip of panic and it's up to Det. Sgt. Deke DaSilva to take him down.
The Ninth Configuration
A new commanding officer arrives at a remote castle serving as an insane asylum for crazy and AWOL U.S. Army soldiers where he attempts to rehabilitate them by allowing them to live out their crazy fantasies while combating his own long-suppressed insanity.
The First Deadly Sin
A serial killer is stalking New York. Inspector Edward X. Delaney is an NYPD detective, nearing retirement, who is trying to put together the pieces of the case. Are the victims somehow linked? What does the brutal method of death signify?
Melvin and Howard
The story of hard-luck Melvin Dummar, who claimed to have received a will naming him an heir to the fortune of Howard Hughes.
Maniac
A schizoid serial killer randomly stalks and kills various young women in New York, which he sees as revenge for the mistreatment he got while being raised by his own abusive mother.
Cruising
A serial killer brutally slays and dismembers several gay men in New York's S&M and leather districts. The young police officer Steve Burns is sent undercover onto the streets as decoy for the murderer. Working almost completely isolated from his department, he has to learn and practice the complex rules and signals of this little society.
Brubaker
Winter Kills
The younger brother of an assassinated US President is led down a rabbit hole of conspiracies and dead ends after learning of a man claiming to be the real shooter.
The Little Dragons
Karate experts attempt to rescue a girl who was kidnapped by a mother and her two psycho sons.
Rocky II
Rocky struggles in family life after his bout with Apollo Creed, while the embarrassed champ insistently goads him to accept a challenge for a rematch.
Last Embrace
A government agent recovering from a nervous breakdown deciphers a death threat written in ancient Hebrew.
Starcrash
An outlaw smuggler and her alien companion are recruited by the Emperor of the Galaxy to rescue his son and destroy a secret weapon by the evil Count Zarth Arn.
Paradise Alley
Three Italian-American brothers, living in the slums of 1940's New York City, try to help each other with one's wrestling career using one brother's promotional skills and another brother's con-artist tactics to thwart a sleazy manager.
Big Wednesday
'Big Wednesday' is a gentle rites-of-passage movie that covers many years in the lives of three friends as they grow up but never entirely grow apart. Both touching and humorous, the film authentically recreates the spirit of 60s and 70s America, looking at the big issues of the time through the eyes of three ordinary young men.
The Godfather: A Novel for Television
A seven-hour chronological edit of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, expanded with over an hour of restored scenes to trace the Corleone family’s rise from Vito’s youth in Sicily to Michael’s reign in 1950s America.
Sorcerer
Four men from different parts of the globe, all hiding from their pasts in the same remote South American town, agree to risk their lives transporting several cases of dynamite (which is so old that it is dripping unstable nitroglycerin) across dangerous jungle terrain.
Taxi Driver
Robert De Niro stars as Travis Bickle in this oppressive psychodrama about a Vietnam veteran who rebels against the decadence and immorality of big city life in New York while working the nightshift as a taxi driver.
Stay Hungry
A dishonest businessman asks rich layabout Craig Blake to help him buy a gym, which will be demolished for a development project in Alabama. But after spending time with weightlifter Joe Santo and gym worker Mary Tate Farnsworth, Craig wants out of the deal.
Rocky
A small time boxer gets a once in a lifetime chance to fight the heavyweight champ in a bout in which he strives to go the distance for his self-respect.
Next Stop, Greenwich Village
The ups and downs of life as experienced by a group of aspiring young artists in the early Fifties New York.
Rancho Deluxe
Two drifters, of widely varying backgrounds, rustle cattle and try to avoid being caught in contemporary Montana.
Farewell, My Lovely
Robert Mitchum's first take as Raymond Chandler's detective Philip Marlowe.
92 in the Shade
A young drifter returns to his home in Key West, Florida and attempts to open a fishing charter business, provoking a dangerous feud with a rival fishing sea captain.
The Godfather: Part II
After the extraordinary success of the first Godfather film came this second saga of the New York mafia family. This mafia epic tells the story of Michael Corleone and his father Vito.
The Seven-Ups
A tough detective who is part of an elite New York City unit is trying to find out who killed his partner, but uncovers a plot to kidnap mobsters for money.
The Godfather
The classic star-studded film from the brilliant direction of Francis Ford Coppola tells the saga of New York mafia family’s everyday life. The film from 1972 became the new ultimate gangster film in the new Hollywood movement.